Road rage defendant not charged as a road hog

Lee Kish of Fanwood, N.J., arrives this week for a hearing in Lower Nazareth… (MICHAEL KUBEL, THE MORNING…)

April 04, 2013|Paul Carpenter

"You're lucky the lion got to you before we did," says crusty old Uncle Hub, played by Robert Duvall in the movie "Secondhand Lions," as he addresses a bully bandaged from head to toe after being mauled.

The bully, an adult, had been slapping around Hub's nephew when the boy's pet, "a real Africa lion," came to the rescue.

If the charges against him are true, Lee Kish of Fanwood, N.J., is lucky that Alyssha Csuk of the Bethlehem area got to him before certain other motorists did.

As it is, Kish is looking at only a piddling 66 years in prison, the maximum allowed by law if he's convicted on all counts, ranging from attempted homicide to carrying a concealed firearm (a powerful .45-caliber handgun) without a license.

A story in The Morning Call on Wednesday said Kish was jailed under $150,000 bail after a March 13 road rage incident on Interstate 78 near the Route 33 interchange.

According to official reports, Kish, 65, was driving in the passing lane at 40 mph to the left of a tractor-trailer that was climbing a hill, when Csuk, 39, got stuck behind him. The speed limit there is 65 mph.

After vehicles approaching from the rear nearly hit her and traffic started backing up, Csuk honked her horn. Kish, it was reported, responded by displaying his middle finger and then roared off in a wild series of maneuvers culminating with his rolling down his window and opening fire.

After hearing a "loud bang" and the sound of breaking glass, Csuk stopped and called 911. The state troopers who rushed to the scene found a bullet hole in her car.

Thanks to her description of the other car and a partial license plate number, the story said, Kish, who said he was on his way home from Upper Macungie Township at the time of the incident, was located in New Jersey and was arrested.

At this week's hearing before District Judge Joseph Barner in Lower Nazareth Township, authorities detailed his previous scrapes with the law, including convictions in Texas for reckless conduct, having prohibited weapons, firing a gun in a residential area and drunken driving.

Moreover, it was reported that after a minor accident in New Jersey, Kish retaliated against the other motorist, also a woman, by going to her home and smashing her vehicle with a rock.

What a scamp.

I also took a look at the criminal complaint against Kish, and it said Csuk had helped authorities locate the vehicle Kish was driving by telling them it had a New Jersey handicap license plate.

I wondered about that, and Pam Lehman, the reporter who covered the hearing, told me that testimony revealed Kish has macular degeneration in both eyes.

Macular degeneration typically causes the loss of vision in the center of one's visual field, so it's understandable why Kish, the poor dear, may not have been a very good shot.

The criminal complaint said Kish "related that he was a victim himself and stated that his driver side mirror was damaged" in the episode. He told police somebody had shot the mirror, but when police checked, they determined it had been hit by a bullet and "the angle of this [bullet] hole was consistent with a projectile coming from the front driver's seat area" of Kish's car.

While all of us are justifiably concerned over an accusation that one motorist opened fire on another because she honked at him, I also have a long history of denouncing road hogs, per se. It is my contention that the failure to crack down on them only contributes to the kinds of behavior described in the I-78 episode.

In the past, with tongue only partly in cheek, I've called for laws to legalize the use of bazookas to dislodge road hogs who refuse to turn right on red, double-park, or, worst of all, clog passing lanes.

If Kish was indeed driving 40 mph in the passing lane alongside a lumbering truck in a 65-mph portion of a major highway, it might have been because such conduct is rarely targeted by law enforcement.

Accordingly, I asked Northampton County Assistant District Attorney Patricia Mulqueen, who is prosecuting Kish, if he also is charged with other offenses apart from those associated with the shoot-em-up.

"He is not," she said. "We concentrated on the more serious charges."

It was Mulqueen who told me the charges facing Kish carry up to 66 years in prison. Unfortunately, an obstruction of traffic charge carries somewhat less severe penalties. That sort of inconsiderate driving, however, may be a chief reason for other forms of road rage and what authorities often call "aggressive driving."

By aggressive driving, they are referring to the sometimes desperate maneuvers motorists must take to get around road hogs who have been led to believe it is acceptable to waste other people's time.

Now, according to what authorities are charging, it seems we have a road hog who was so imbued with that attitude that he objected to someone else objecting to his obnoxious driving habits, and did so with frightening action.

I'll not argue against a 66-year incarceration for anybody who tries to shoot another motorist who was only trying to get by, but it's obvious we need tougher sanctions against road hogs in the first place.